Day 8 30DC - X Marks the Spot

We've all seen those adventure movies where the hero(ine) has a treasure map but the part containing the X is missing, or they have a complete map without any labels so they don't know where to start. It is only by luck that they'll have any chance of finding what they seek.

This is exactly the thing that the Thirty Day Challenge team addressed in today's training. You can't find the treasure if you don't have any indication of where the gold is.


The million-dollar technique demonstrated today gives us all the landmarks we need to zero in on the gold in Internet Marketing. They shared with us a way of comparing the various statistics we've been looking at up to this point, so that we can correctly evaluate the traffic potential for any keyword phrase. More importantly, they showed how to use a baseline or benchmark to validate those statistics.

Baselines and benchmarks represent known, quantifiable, and tested points against which all other results can be compared. These consistent measurements give you a concrete way to prove the worth of your work and research.

In business, medicine, and project management, a baseline is a snapshot of your current situation. Before making any changes, you want to have a baseline against which to compare future results. The baseline is the known, that allows you to venture into the unknown.

Similarly a benchmark is a known, fixed point that gives you confidence in all of your results. Benchmarks are achieved through known and repeatable processes, the key being "repeatable". If you do the same things, you are going to get the same results, consistently and reliably.

In business, this is a valuable lesson. In Internet Marketing, it's revolutionary. Internet marketing has often been trial and error, hit and miss. It seemed that a good deal of range-finding was involved -- taking a shot, seeing where it hit, and readjusting if it missed the target. As Ed has told us, it took 38 tries before his first website was successful at generating revenue. He didn't have these techniques way back then.

That he and his team are sharing them now is a tribute to their generosity and character. They have given us a treasure map, complete with legend and starting point. The only thing left to do is follow it.